


dog days

by sunbrights



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Birthday Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 01:00:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15131609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbrights/pseuds/sunbrights
Summary: When's your birthday, Pekoyama-san?





	dog days

Nanami asks, “When’s your birthday, Pekoyama-san?”

Peko doesn’t know how to respond.

She knows, factually, the answer to the question. It’s an incidental piece of information; there’s no risk in her telling the truth. If anything, doing so could serve as a bonding moment with her classmates, and reinforce the image the young master has asked her to project. 

She hesitates anyway.

Nanami has drawn a chart on a large sheet of poster paper and split it into quadrants: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. She, Mioda, and Koizumi are planning to arrange one class party per season, with the logic that doing so will save money and time, while also making sure every birthday is celebrated.

They’d looped around part of the room already, before coming to Peko. The chart is beginning to fill in, with weight in spring and summer. The rest of the class looks at her expectantly.

The young master is looking at her, too. She shouldn’t, not when there’s so much attention trained on her at one time, but she still glances at him for his reaction.

He’s upset. His arms are crossed tightly over his chest, and his expression is pinched. She’s been silent too long, she realizes. She failed to capitalize on an opportunity when it was presented to her.

“How much longer are we gonna do this?” he interjects. “I don’t give a shit when any of your birthdays are.” 

Koizumi wrinkles her nose. “Don’t worry, Kuzuryuu,” she says, with lilting sarcasm, “nobody was suggesting having a party for _you._ Chiaki-chan was _asking_ Peko-chan.”

“I’m the one having to listen this shit. Are you gonna go all around the fuckin’ room? You seriously think I’m gonna sit here wasting my time like that?”

“It’d be nice if you’d stop thinking about yourself for half a second! What, you think we shouldn’t do something nice for Peko-chan’s birthday just because you can’t be bothered to sit quietly for a few minutes?” 

“Fuck you, Nanami’s the one putting everybody on the spot! Maybe some of us don’t want you assholes all up in our business, did you think about that?”

“How about you be quiet and let Peko-chan decide that, huh?”

The young master flushes red, high in his cheeks, and clenches his jaw so tightly that even on the other side of the room, Peko can see how the muscles jump in his face. He doesn’t have a retort right away. The resulting silence is thick and uncomfortable. 

Koizumi seems taken off-balance. She and Mioda exchange glances.

“I don’t give a shit,” the young master says, finally, his glare aimed high at the blackboard. “Do whatever you want. Just hurry it up already.”

Mioda cuts in before Koizumi can respond. “So…” She fidgets at the front of the room, index fingers poked together. “What do you think, Peko-chan?”

Peko looks at Nanami’s chart. Her name would go in the summer quadrant, top right, between Souda’s and Owari’s.

“It’s not necessary,” she decides. “We should move on.”

Nanami smiles at her. “Okay,” she says, and does. “What about you, Nidai-kun?”

*

Of the fifteen of them, only she, the young master, and Tanaka decline to share their birthdays. 

After class, the young master refuses to look at her at all.

*

The first party is in late April. It’s the largest of them, with five birthdays to celebrate at once, but Nanami, Koizumi, and Mioda still manage to organize and execute it in only a few weeks. They take over the classroom after school, and instruct everyone to stop by after their clubs and practices are finished.

The young master opts not to attend. Peko isn’t inclined to go, herself, but her hesitance at the beginning of the project was a missed opportunity, and the young master has made his disapproval clear since then; he avoids her, even after school, when it's just the two of them. There is ground that needs to be made up, and a class party is the most efficient way to do so.

Each honoree has their own station set up in the classroom, constructed from a handful of desks pushed together and a tablecloth laid out over them. There are snacks and party favors specific to each person at each station: Saionji has a pile of sweet gummies and traditional desserts, Koizumi has postcards from foreign cities signed by friends as birthday cards, and Tsumiki has a stack of delicately-made, bite-sized appetizers.

“You came,” Nanami observes. Her station has a pile of small, handheld games on keychains and a spread of simple finger snacks. 

“Yes.” Peko isn’t sure what the etiquette is. Nanami’s birthday was more than a month ago, but she says, “... Happy birthday,” anyway.

Nanami doesn’t seem bothered. “Thanks,” she says. “Do you want one of these?” She holds out one of the keychains. On closer inspection, it’s a game where you hatch, raise, and care for a pet. “I think you’d like it.”

Peko had only intended to stay for the first twenty minutes or so— just long enough for everyone in the room to see her, and for her to have a handful of conversations. The creature in the keychain game is cute, though, with big, floppy ears like a rabbit. It seems simple enough. She takes the keychain, and lets Nanami talk her through the controls.

After that, Koizumi offers to show her photos from her last trip to Kyoto. After that, Nidai asks her questions about her latest training regimen and what changes she’s made to encourage growth. After that, Owari challenges her to a spar, and when she declines, challenges herself to an eating competition.

Peko stays longer than she intends.

*

She enjoys the game. She keeps the little keychain clipped to the top of her sword bag, so that she can mind the creature's needs during meals and class breaks. The young master notices it a week later, when it's just the two of them, alone in the dojo. The body of the keychain is purple and glittery, and it catches his eye when she undoes the tie of her bag.

"What's that?" he asks.

She's embarrassed to say. She recognizes it for the trifling thing it is, now that he's noticed. "It's a game," she explains anyway. "Nanami had them as party favors."

He stares at it for a long time, long enough that she considers the possibility he might ask her to throw it away. He would have every right. A distraction is a distraction, no matter how minor. But he only says, "Oh," and doesn't bring it up again.

Peko decides to keep it until he does.

*

June comes and goes as normal. She wakes up, she trains, she attends class, and she reports to the young master as needed.

Nanami, Koizumi, and Mioda plan the next party for the next set of birthdays. They designate summer as June through August. There are three, officially, to be celebrated: Souda, Owari, and Mitarai.

There’s no reason for anything in Peko’s schedule to change.

*

On the thirtieth, the young master asks her to meet with him after school. They do so privately, in an alley behind the gym. It’s one of several meeting spots they rotate, to reduce the number of people who might notice a pattern.

From his wording, she had assumed he had something to say to her, but when she arrives, he only looks at her, arms crossed and shoulders pressed back into the brick. “So,” he says, clipped. He grimaces at the ground, and she isn’t sure why. “How was— your day?”

She gives him her report, as normal. She isn’t certain that it’s what he was asking for; he looks more unhappy the longer she talks, but he doesn’t interrupt. When she’s finished, he only nods. “Okay,” he says. “Well— good.”

She has nothing more to say, and neither, it seems, does he. “Was there something else you needed?” she asks.

The muscles of his jaw jump and work. “No.”

She waits to be dismissed. 

He doesn’t dismiss her. 

He seems to be struggling. He glares down at his feet, arms squeezed even tighter around his ribcage. There’s nothing to be done but wait for him to process his thoughts.

“Nanami and them are still doing that party thing for the summer, right?” he asks eventually. He doesn’t look her in the face when he does.

“I believe so,” she answers. 

“When is it?”

“I don’t know.” She hadn’t planned to attend. She had enjoyed the spring party, but the idea of the summer one sits poorly in her stomach whenever she entertains it. “Would you like me to find out?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “I mean— I don’t give a shit. It’s— whatever.”

He’s told her (and the rest of their classmates) many times and in no uncertain terms that he has no intention of participating in any of the organized social activities for the class. It’s not her place to force her perspective on him. His choices are his own. But she knows he doesn’t prefer to sit alone in the darkness of his dorm room.

“You should go,” he tells her. “Whenever it is. It’s your fuckin’ party too. You know?”

She doesn’t. She struggles to follow the path of his logic, and ends only on: “It isn’t.”

“It is!” His voice is loud enough that he startles himself. He grits his teeth. “Your birthday’s in the summer, ain’t it?”

So is his. Peko doesn’t say so.

“Do you want me to attend?” she asks instead.

“That’s not what I said! Will you just— fucking listen?” 

She wants to. She’s trying to. She doesn’t know what she’s done to agitate him so much, but not understanding his moods is her mistake to correct. She only nods, to give him room to talk.

He’s red in the face again, his jaw tight. His expression reminds her of early in the year, when Nanami and Koizumi and Mioda were asking for their birthdays.

“Just—” He exhales, harshly. “If you want to go, go. If you don’t, don’t. That’s it. Okay?”

She still doesn’t understand. She nods anyway, and bows at the shoulder. “Was there anything else, young master?”

“No.” He sounds tired now, instead of angry. He turns his face away. It doesn’t feel like an improvement. “You can go, Peko.”

*

The summer party, it turns out, is planned for the last week before summer vacation. Koizumi tells her it’s to balance between Souda’s birthday at the end of June, Owari’s in mid-July, and Mitarai’s in late August.

The idea of attending it is still strange, and not altogether pleasant.

Peko goes anyway.

When she gets there, there are four stations set up instead of three. The fourth is smaller than the others, and seems hastily put together; the tablecloth is plastic instead of linen, and there’s a less varied spread of food options.

“It’s for Kuzuryuu-kun,” Nanami explains around a yawn. “He told us what to get for him. He had a whole list.”

“That guy.” Koizumi rolls her eyes. “I can’t believe him sometimes. He makes all these demands last minute, and then he doesn’t even show up to a party that’s _for_ him? It’s just disrespectful.”

“He might be embarrassed,” Nanami says. She chews thoughtfully on her straw. “He seemed embarrassed when we were talking before.”

There is a plate of red bean buns, decorated like various breeds of dogs and stacked in a neat pyramid. They’re the sweetest thing on the table; everything else is savory snacks, not desserts. The tablecloth is black, with a subtle, abstract pattern drawn in red.

They don’t look like selections for the young master. They look like selections for her.

“Kuzuryuu has a summer birthday?” she asks.

“August,” Nanami says. “The sixteenth. … I think.”

“Which means it’s always during summer vacation,” Koizumi says. “He was probably just trying to be a tough guy about never having a party thrown for him.”

“I see.” Peko sets the tips of her fingers on the table, and traces one delicate edge of a line. It curves around, not unlike a flower petal. “May I…?”

Mioda spreads both arms and spins in place. “Knock yourself out!” she whoops. “It’s a party for evvvverybody!”

“Yeah, go right ahead. If Kuzuryuu has a problem with it, it’s his own fault for being late.”

She takes a plate and stacks it with small servings of each appetizer, and two of the red bean buns. They’re cute, with big eyes and lolling tongues.

After a few minutes— long enough for everyone in the room to see her, and for her to have a handful of conversations— she leaves.

*

She takes the plate back up to the dorm. There’s a frenzy of activity in the days before vacation; students make last-minute plans, sprint back and forth between rooms, and let their doors hang open in the summer heat.

She stops at the young master’s room and rings the doorbell.

The door cracks open, just enough for him to put one foot out into the hall. His gaze bounces from her face, to the plate in her hands, to the open space behind her shoulder. He’s uncomfortable. She doesn’t visit him at his dorm room often, specifically so they aren’t seen or overheard in what’s often a high-traffic hallway. 

She greets him with, “Kuzuryuu,” and some of the wariness in his expression relaxes. “I noticed that you weren’t at the party this afternoon.”

He snorts. “So? I ended up not feeling like going. I didn’t ask them to do any of that shit.” He leans one shoulder against the door frame, but his eyes keep dropping to the plate in her hands. “Was it— I mean, how was it?”

“It was nice,” she answers. “I enjoyed it.”

He ducks his chin, and clears his throat. “So,” he says, “what the hell are you doin’ here then, huh?”

On most days, the ruse is easy enough to maintain. She only has to adjust her behavior with her other classmates. With him, it’s more difficult, even though it shouldn’t be. She straightens her shoulders.

“Nanami informed me that your birthday is in August,” she says. She might say it too stiffly, because his eyebrows lift and his eyes narrow underneath, amusement not quite suppressed. They’re small enough motions to feel safe, even out in the open like this. “I wanted to wish you good luck, before summer vacation.”

She offers him the plate. He takes a bun shaped like an Akita, with its tall, pointed ears, and holds it carefully between two fingers. “Don’t you mean,” his eyes flick up to hers, brief but meaningful, “happy birthday?”

“Yes.” She picks one shaped like a spaniel. It smiles up at her, with a curled mouth and long, rounded ears. “Thank you.”


End file.
